Norma Jeane Mortenson
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Norma Jeane Mortenson was born on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles. She grew up in foster homes after her mother was institutionalized. In 1953, Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes turned her into a star. She died in 1962 at age 36 from a drug overdose. She remains one of Hollywood’s most widely recognized figures.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Marilyn Monroe — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Marilyn Monroe by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Marilyn Monroe — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Norma Jeane Mortenson was born on June 1, 1926 at Los Angeles County Hospital. Her mother Gladys Monroe, a film-cutter, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and committed to a state hospital when Norma Jeane was seven. She moved through foster homes and the Los Angeles Orphan’s Home in 1935, then stayed with Grace Goddard, her mother’s friend, until Grace’s husband molested her. At 16, she married neighbor James Dougherty in 1942 to avoid the orphanage.
After her divorce from Dougherty in 1946, Monroe modeled and signed a contract with 20th Century Fox, which lapsed after a year. A six-month contract with Columbia in 1948 gave her a first singing role in Ladies of the Chorus. Joseph L. Mankiewicz spotted her in The Asphalt Jungle 1950 and cast her in All About Eve 1950, prompting Fox to re-sign her. In 1953, Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes made her a Hollywood superstar. She wanted to be taken seriously as an actress, so she studied at the Actors Studio in New York with Lee Strasberg. Her performance in Bus Stop 1956 earned critical praise. Her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller produced The Misfits 1961, her final completed film.
Monroe married three times: to James Dougherty 1942-1946, baseball star Joe DiMaggio 1954-1955, wedding night in Paso Robles, and playwright Arthur Miller 1956-1961, married twice in civil and Jewish ceremonies. She had two miscarriages during her marriage to Miller. She counted singer Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Garland as close friends. She helped Fitzgerald book segregated nightclubs. She owned over 400 books and studied literature at UCLA.
Marilyn Monroe remains a lasting cultural figure, remembered for her blend of vulnerability and sex appeal. Her 1955 white dress scene from The Seven Year Itch is among cinema’s most recognized images. She was the first Playboy centerfold in 1953. Posthumously, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her estate earns millions annually through licensing. Over 600 books have been written about her. She is often remembered for transforming herself from a troubled orphan into a star of 1950s Hollywood.
Browse the complete filmography of Marilyn Monroe — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
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Every award, honor, and recognition received by Marilyn Monroe — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
Marilyn Monroe's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
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A wall of memorable lines from Marilyn Monroe — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
I Love a Natural Look in Pictures. I Like People with a Feeling One Way or Another It Shows an Inner Life. I Like to See That There’s Something Going on Inside Them.
My Problem Is That I Drive Myself… I’m Trying to Become an Artist, and to Be True, and Sometimes I Feel I’m on the Verge of Craziness, I’m Just Trying to Get the Truest Part of Myself Out, and It’s Very Hard. There Are Times When I Think, ‘All I Have to Be Is True’. but Sometimes It Doesn’t Come Out so Easily. I Always Have This Secret Feeling That I’m Really a Fake or Something, a Phony.
I Want to Be a Big Star More Than Anything. It’s Something Precious.
I’m Not Interested in Money, I Just Want to Be Wonderful.
A Career Is Wonderful, but You Can’t Curl up with It on a Cold Night.
Sometimes I Think It Would Be Easier to Avoid Old Age, to Die, Young, but Then You’d Never Complete Your Life, Would You? You’d Never Wholly Know Yourself…
A Dollar for Your Thoughts…
I’ve Been on a Calendar, but Never on Time.
No One Ever Told Me I Was Pretty When I Was a Little Girl. All Little Girls Should Be Told They’re Pretty, Even If They Aren’t.
In Hollywood a Girl’s Virtue Is Much Less Important Than Her Hairdo. You’re Judged by How You Look, Not by What You Are. Hollywood’s a Place Where They’ll Pay You a Thousand Dollars for Kiss, and Fifty Cents for Your Soul. I Know, Because I Turned Down the First Offer Often Enough and Held Out for the Fifty.
Dogs Never Bite Me. Just Humans.
Sex Is a Part of Nature. I Go Along with Nature.
Fame Will Go by And, so Long, I’ve Had You, Fame. If It Goes By, I’ve Always Known It Was Fickle.
I Knew I Belonged to the Public and to the World, Not Because I Was Talented or Even Beautiful, but Because I Never Had Belonged to Anything or Anyone Else.
People Had a Habit of Looking at Me as If I Were Some Kind of Mirror Instead of a Person. They Didn’t See Me, They Saw Their Own Lewd Thoughts, Then They White Masked Themselves by Calling Me the Lewd One.
A Sex Symbol Becomes a Thing, I Just Hate Being a Thing. but If I’m Going to Be a Symbol of Something I’d Rather Have It Sex Than Some Other Things We’ve Got Symbols Of.
The Truth Is I’ve Never Fooled Anyone. I’ve Let People Fool Themselves. They Didn’t Bother to Find Out Who and What I Was. Instead They Would Invent a Character for Me. I Wouldn’t Argue with Them. They Were Obviously Loving Somebody I Wasn’t. When They Found This Out, They Would Blame Me for Disillusioning Them and Fooling Them.
To Put It Bluntly, I Seem to Have a Whole Superstructure with No Foundation. but I’m Working on the Foundation.
If I Had Observed All the Rules, I’d Never Have Gotten Anywhere.
I Want to Grow Old Without Face Lifts… I Want to Have the Courage to Be Loyal to the Face That I Have Made.
It’s Often Just Enough to Be with Someone. I Don’t Need to Touch Them. Not Even Talk. a Feeling Passes Between You Both. You’re Not Alone.
I’m a Failure as a Woman. My Men Expect so Much of Me, Because of the Image They’ve Made of Me and That I’ve Made of Myself, as a Sex Symbol. Men Expect so Much, and I Can’t Live up to It.
It Stirs up Envy, Fame Does. People You Run into Feel That, Well, Who Does She Think She Is, Marilyn Monroe? They Feel Fame Gives Them Some Kind of Privilege to Walk up to You and Say Anything to You, You Know, of Any Kind of Nature and It Won’t Hurt Your Feelings.
Fame Is Fickle, and I Know It. It Has It’s Compensations but It Also Has It’s Drawbacks, and I’ve Experienced Them Both.
My Illusions Didn’t Have Anything to Do with Being a Fine Actress. I Knew How Third Rate I Was. I Could Actually Feel My Lack of Talent, as If It Were Cheap Clothes I Was Wearing Inside. but My God, How I Wanted to Learn, to Change, to Improve!
If I Play a Stupid Girl, and Ask a Stupid Question, I’ve Got to Follow It Through. What Am I Supposed to Do, Look Intelligent?
An Actor Is Supposed to Be a Sensitive Instrument. Isaac Stern Takes Good Care of His Violin. What If Everyone Jumped on His Violin?
There Was My Name up in Lights. I Said, God, Somebody’s Made a Mistake! but There It Was in Lights. and I Sat There and Said, Remember, You’re Not a Star. yet There It Was up in Lights.
Some People Have Been Unkind. If I Say I Want to Grow as an Actress, They Look at My Figure. If I Say I Want to Develop, to Learn My Craft, They Laugh. Somehow They Don’t Expect Me to Be Serious About My Work.
I Was Never Used to Being Happy, so That Wasn’t Something I Ever Took for Granted. I Did Sort of Think, You Know, Marriage Did That. You See, I Was Brought up Differently from the Average American Child Because the Average Child Is Brought up Expecting to Be Happy That’s It, Successful, Happy, and on Time.
You Know, When You Grow up You Can Get Kind of Sour, I Mean, That’s the Way It Can Go.
Wouldn’t It Be Nice to Be Like Men and Get Notches in Your Belt and Sleep with Most Attractive Men and Not Get Emotionally Involved?
I Used to Think as I Looked at the Hollywood Night, There Must Be Thousands of Girls Sitting Alone Like Me, Dreaming of Becoming a Movie Star. but I’m Not Going to Worry About Them. I’m Dreaming the Hardest.
The Trouble with Censors Is They Worry If a Girl Has Cleavage. They Ought to Worry If She Hasn’t Any.
I Used to Say to Myself, What the Devil Have You Got to Be Proud About, Marilyn Monroe? and I’d Answer, Everything, Everything.
I Want to Be an Artist, an Actress with Integrity.
I’ve Never Dropped Anyone I Believed In.
I Restore Myself When I’m Alone. a Career Is Born in Public Talent in Private.
Little-known facts about Marilyn Monroe — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Ex-husband Joe DiMaggio placed fresh roses at her memorial site for numerous years after her death.
She often carried around the book The Biography of Abraham Lincoln.
She spent most of her early childhood in foster homes and orphanages because her mother was committed to a mental institution. Later, she lived with her mother’s best friend, Grace McKee, who pierced her ears with a sewing needle when she was 15. At 16, she married to avoid returning to the orphanage.
Fearing blemishes and sweat, she washed her face fifteen times a day.
She was good friends with Judy Garland.
When told she was not the star in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 1953, she said, Well whatever I am, I’m still the blonde.
She was close friends with singer Ella Fitzgerald and helped her advance her musical career by arranging for her to sing in upscale nightclubs, some of which were segregated at the time.
Her personal library contained over 400 books on topics from art to history, psychology, philosophy, literature, religion, poetry, and gardening, many with her pencil notations.
In 1972, actress Veronica Hamel and her husband purchased Monroe’s Brentwood home and discovered a sophisticated eavesdropping and telephone tapping system covering every room, likely installed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to monitor the Kennedy brothers.
Monroe was a stutterer, a little-known fact covered up by studio vocal coaches who provided diction lessons.
Because the bathing suit she wore in the movie Love Nest 1951 was so risque for the time, director Joseph M. Newman made the set closed when she was filming.
Her Happy Birthday, Mr. President dress sold for $1,267,500, a world record at the time, and is in the Guinness Book of World Records.
She learned to play the guitar for her role in River of No Return 1954 and the ukulele for Some Like It Hot 1959.
She married Arthur Miller twice: first in a civil ceremony, then in a Jewish ceremony two days later, to which she had converted.
She was discovered dead at her home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, Brentwood, California, with a phone in one hand, nude and face down on her bed.
She tried 9 different shades of blonde before settling on platinum blonde.
She left Hollywood to pursue serious acting by studying under Lee Strasberg at his Actors Studio in New York City.
Although she was perhaps the most famous actress of the 1950s, she never made more than $100,000 per picture upfront, while actresses like Elizabeth Taylor earned significantly more.
The dress she wore to serenade John F. Kennedy on May 19, 1962 was so tight it had to be sewn onto her, and she had to sit still for an hour.
She became pregnant twice during her marriage to Arthur Miller July 1957 and November 1958, but both ended in miscarriages.
When not acting, she preferred to wear nothing but a bathrobe and occasionally a bikini.
Her first modeling job paid only five dollars.
She wore glasses.
She appeared on the first cover of Playboy in December 1953.
Her last film Something’s Got to Give 1962 was finally released in 2003, with a swimming pool scene revealing more than her controversial calendar photo.
Her classic shape, according to her dressmaker, measured 37-23-36.
She started using the name Marilyn Monroe in 1946 but did not legally change it until 1956.
She suffered from endometriosis, a painful condition that can cause infertility.
The first time she signed an autograph as Marilyn Monroe, she had to ask how to spell it.
Richard Widmark said of co-starring with her in Don’t Bother to Knock: She was a vulnerable kid… murder to work with because she was scared to death of acting.
She was suggested as a possible wife for Prince Rainier of Monaco, but he chose Grace Kelly.
She read and wrote poetry.
To fall asleep, she often mixed champagne with sleeping pills.
There are over 600 books written about her.
She was an outstanding player on the Hollygrove Orphanage softball team.
When she died in 1962 at age 36, she left an estate valued at $1.6 million. She bequeathed 75% to Lee Strasberg and 25% to Dr. Marianne Kris.
Time Magazine reported in 1973 that coroner Thomas Noguchi said her stomach was never pumped after death; the level of Nembutal in her bloodstream indicated 40-50 capsules, suggesting suicide.
She is interred at Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles, in the Corridor of Memories, crypt #24.
Aside from Norma Jeane Mortenson, she was baptized as Norma Jeane Baker and used the name Norma Jeane Dougherty during her first marriage. She also used Jean Norman as a model. Stage names considered included Carole Lind, but she chose Marilyn Monroe, with Marilyn from actress Marilyn Miller.
According to the book Flesh and Fantasy, she perfected a Vaseline-based lip gloss.
The licensing of her name and likeness by Curtis Management Group nets her estate about $2 million a year.
In 1999, a make-up kit she owned sold for $266,500.
The famous nude photo by Tom Kelley first appeared anonymously as a calendar called Miss Golden Dreams. In 1952, a blackmailer threatened to identify her, but she announced it herself. Hugh Hefner bought the rights for $500 and used it in the first Playboy issue.
She was originally set to play Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s 1961, but Audrey Hepburn got the role.
Her bouts with depression and self-destruction during filming The Seven Year Itch 1955 led to up to 40 takes per scene, swelling the budget to $1.8 million. The famous dress-blowing scene was shot on Lexington Avenue in New York at 1 a.m. on September 15, 1954, but crowd noise forced a re-shoot on the Fox lot.
Though she owned over 400 books, third husband Arthur Miller said she rarely read anything all the way through, feeling she could get the idea in a few pages.
She was one of the first Los Angeles natives to become a major movie star.
Her mother was born in Piedras Negras, Mexico, to American parents. Her biological father was Charles Stanley Gifford of English descent. Through him, she is related to several U.S. presidents.
Hundreds of items of memorabilia were auctioned by Christie’s in October 1999, with her JFK birthday gown fetching over $1 million.
A 1982 review of her death inquest concluded she committed suicide or accidentally overdosed, not murder, despite sloppy evidence handling.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Marilyn Monroe.
Celebrities similar to Marilyn Monroe — same craft, ranked by reach.
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